It is appropriate that the magazine’s inaugural issue should focus on proteomics, for the science of proteins—many
experts believe—will be one of the most important fields influencing 21st Century medicine. Richard Caprioli, director of the Mass Spectrometry Research
Center at Vanderbilt and a member of this magazine’s editorial board, puts it this way: “We’re on the threshold of the journey to cure
disease.”

As we marvel at the advances that are coming our way, we should not forget the scientists of centuries past who first opened up new
worlds of wonder beyond the reach of our eyes. “If I have seen further,” said Sir Isaac Newton, “it is by standing on the shoulders of
giants.”

Imagine yourself driving in the country in a convertible, watching the grassy fields roll by, feeling the wind in your face. Much of
what you’re experiencing—including the ability to grasp the steering wheel and hear the music on the radio—is due to the actions and
interactions of microscopic protein molecules in your nerves, your muscles, your eyes and ears.

Now imagine the interior of your body: the antibodies
(also proteins) that fight infection, the complex symphony of protein messages that tell your tissues to grow or not to grow, the signals transmitted by
proteins across synaptic junctions in your brain that enable you to think.

Imagine if something goes wrong with some of your proteins, and your
body’s immune system mistakes your own tissues for bacterial invaders, or because of poorly translated instructions some cells begin to grow out of
control, or the signaling across the synapse is disrupted. You may develop an illness like multiple sclerosis or cancer or depression.

Just as the
development of the microscope in the 17th Century enabled people to see what was previously un-seeable, today we’re going through a similar
perceptual revolution. Our modern medicine currently can address only the symptoms or consequences of many illnesses, ranging from dementia to diabetes. But
now, through advances in genomics and computer science, we are beginning to appreciate the pervasive role that proteins play in maintaining health or causing
disease.

Thanks to technologies like mass spectrometry, protein “chips” and bioinformatics, we are now able to examine nature through a
new lens, one that may enable us for the first time to understand the root causes of many diseases, to stop them more successfully than we ever have before, and
ultimately to prevent them from occurring in the first place.

This lens is not the private property of doctors or scientists. It is available to all
who would look through it.

That is why we at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have produced a new publication accessible to the general public. In
this and future issues, we will examine the frontiers of biological science and medical research, and how the new knowledge gained from these inquiries may
affect our lives.